Notre Dame sets up pro-life fund

February 27, 2009|Tribune Staff Report

SOUTH BEND Â? A fund has been established in the University of Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture to support pro-life activities on campus and beyond.

Efforts supported by the Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life will mainly focus on issues arising from the plight of human life in its earliest stages, from conception to the early days of infancy, the university announced Wednesday.

The fund will be administered by a committee headed by David Solomon, chair of the Center for Ethics and Culture. Other members are Daniel McInerny and Elizabeth Kirk, the center's associate directors; the Rev. Wilson Miscamble, a history professor; and O. Carter Snead, a Notre Dame law professor and former chief counsel for the president's Council on Bioethics.

The types of activities the fund might support are transportation and other costs of student participation in the annual Right-to-Life march in Washington, D.C., expenses of the undergraduate and Law School student Right-to-Life clubs, essay contests and academic competitions encouraging scholarship on pro-life issues, and sponsorship of campus lectures and seminars, according to the university.

"We want to educate Notre Dame students and others in the rich intellectual tradition supporting the dignity of human life, specifically in its beginning stages, and to prepare those students, through personal witness, public service, and prayer to transform the culture into one where every human life is respected," Kirk said.

The fund will be used to support fundamental academic research as well as focused policy research on life issues, according to Solmon.